


In the middle of an open road

by feroxargentea



Category: Hard Core Logo (1996)
Genre: AU-Exchange treat, Co-Dependency, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Grieving, M/M, Post-Canon, Rock Bands, Substance Abuse, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-06-27 19:47:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15692181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feroxargentea/pseuds/feroxargentea
Summary: Welcome to Hard Core Logo. You don’t get to leave.





	In the middle of an open road

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gwenfrankenstien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwenfrankenstien/gifts).



> Written for the AU-exchange, for gwenfrankenstien, who requested vampire!Billy and/or ghost!Joe. Thank you to alltoseek and cj2017 for beta.

* * *

 

Decay, the pervasive stink of it coating everything it touches.

Time in this place has lost its meaning. There’s nothing here but rot and putrescence, as Joe’s body sinks slowly into corruption.

 

* * *

 

Fresh air, startling in its sharpness. Mown grass. Burnt gasoline, drifting on the breeze.

Odours that he’d forgotten for a year or more are swirling round him, searing through his flesh and consciousness. He’s flung into wakefulness, gasping for breath.

One more shot and then...what?

A bullet to the head will kill a human. Turns out it kills a bloodsucker too. Mostly.

 

* * *

 

He tries to breathe. Keeps on trying.

He catches the stink of whiskey and cigarettes and hair gel and blood— _Billy—_

—and then it’s gone.

He keeps on trying.

 

* * *

 

Whiskey. Cigarettes. Hair gel. Blood. He hunts for the scent trails, can’t stop hunting.

Sometimes he glimpses a gore-spattered figure, lurking here and there in the darkness. Billy on an unlit stage, cradling his smashed guitar, or crouched in a back alley, bent over a body. Joe’s body, sometimes, bleeding into the gutter through the holes in his head. Sometimes a rent boy or hooker instead, some other soul who won’t be missed.

Past, present, future, all intercut without sense or flow. He can’t keep his grip on the narrative structure.

He doesn’t stop trying.

 

* * *

 

Stale beer and bleach and industrial-strength urinal cakes. Walls plastered with torn promo posters. He clutches at the stench to fix his place. It’s clearer than before, less jagged, less jumbled. He’s backstage at some gig. A club, or stadium, or wherever the hell Jenifur’s playing these days.

Billy’s here too, as he always is. Opiate-thin and swaying where he stands, in dark jeans and damp shirt. Both his arms round some chick with bite marks on her neck and confusion in her eyes, as if—like Joe—she’s not too sure which reality she’s in. Billy reeks of sweated-out booze, but his lips are flushed unnaturally red, so at least he’s tempering his whiskey with a fresh blood chaser. He coaxes the girl to her knees and rests his head back against the posters, breathing hard. Pushing her hair aside, she leans in, clumsy but eager to please.

Joe ignores her and watches Billy instead, watches the way his eyelids twitch, his fingers twist in her pink-streaked hair, his hips shift just a little as he gets what he wants. He doesn’t thrust. Not much, anyway. Later she’ll tell her friends how sweet he was, but it’s Joe who gets to watch him as he comes.

The groupie lingers on her knees when she’s done, wiping her mouth with a surreptitious hand. Then she gets to her feet, hesitant and blushing. Billy smiles at her, warm and intimate, and that’s all it takes. That’s all it ever took. He’s fucking angelic when he smiles. Heart-stopping, if Joe’d had a heartbeat to start with. The trick of it, Joe knows, is that it isn’t a trick at all. Just for that second or two, Billy really means it.

Then, deaf to the groupie’s half-voiced protests, he steers her out of the room and shuts the door. Slumping down by the mirror, he wipes his eyes, smearing eyeliner across lids already dark with exhaustion.

Dark—way too dark. The whole room is dimming, cross-fading into the void. Joe tries to breathe deep, latch onto that familiar scent before he loses his hold on reality again.

Too late. The world shifts sideways, and Billy’s gone.

 

* * *

 

Cigarette smoke, and the crackle of electricity through beige-papered walls. Billy, alone in his hotel room, just as he has been the last dozen nights. Joe sits cross-legged by the AC, watching the drapes shivering in the recycled breeze.

“Hey, Billiam?” he calls, in a mocking singsong. “Billiam?”

It doesn’t work. He knows by now that it doesn’t work.

Billy picks up his Strat, strums. Twists the rhythm into something loud and fast. Starts humming and then singing to himself.

_“And the morning light came slowly tumbling through the crack in the window, Joe, and I thought of you, man, and I felt like I was lugging a body on my back...”_

“That’s not funny,” Joe says. “Hey, that’s not buddies!”  Choral harmonies and electric fucking organ, suburban ass-licking shite. He’s always hated that album.

“ _I had a dream, yeah, I had a dream, Joe...”_

“Fuck the Bad Seeds,” Joe says, kicking at him, tugging at the power cord. “Play one of ours. Play one of mine!”

The kick doesn’t connect, of course. His foot passes straight through flesh and bone. Billy doesn’t even blink, just goes on crooning the chorus, low and vicious, till the song trails off into discordance.

 

* * *

 

Billy’s trashed again. Face down in the king-size bed, his fresh-bleached hair mashed all ways.

A guy comes out of the en suite, zipping up his pants, trailing a smell of soap and weed, spunk and sweat—Billy’s sweat, all over him. Joe’s seen him before with the entourage. A guy called Zeke, built like a roadie, all massive shoulders and shaved head. Billy’s type. Also Billy’s minder, nanny, whatever. He’s a softly spoken man, exuding the quiet menace of all good bouncers, and all good nut-house nurses. Zookeeper Zeke, Joe thinks, grinning to himself.

“The limo’ll be here in an hour,” Zeke says, buttoning his shirt. “You’d better get ready. Hey, did you hear me?”

“Fffffuck off.” Billy’s voice, muffled by the pillow.

Zeke opens the apartment door and pauses by it. “I left clean clothes for you by the sink. You need anything else?”

Billy rolls over. “My diaper changing?”

Zeke gives him a patient smile that makes Joe want to head-butt the patronising cunt.

“No?” Billy says sweetly. “Then you can fuck off.” Untangling a hand from the sheets, he flings something pale and wet that hits the doorframe and slides to the carpet in a trail of discoloured slime. He laughs, a tight, mean laugh.

Zeke looks down at the soggy condom. “Y’know, it’s okay to miss him,” he says softly. “It’s _normal_ to miss him.”

Billy slams upright, flushed to his roots. “Get out,” he spits. “Get _out_.”

For a split second, Joe thinks Billy means him. He doesn’t leave, of course. He wouldn’t know how.

 

* * *

 

Billy’s asleep, sprawled across the covers, one arm dangling near the scorch mark on the carpet. Lit cigarettes are his shortest cut to self-destruction: one of these days Joe’s going to have to sit and watch him burn, unless he can figure out how to douse a fire without breath or substance.

He wanders over to the AC, watching the dusty air swirling round its vents. It’s cranked up to eleven, and he still can’t breathe. Dead a year and still can’t breathe—ha, he’s a fucking comedian. He tugs at his sleeves, wishing he could roll them up, bare some skin. That’s something they don’t teach you in bloodsucker school: don’t shoot yourself decked out for winter in Deadmonton when your sellout prick of a soulmate’s headed for southern California.

He pokes at the overflowing ashtrays on the vanity, the glass of blood still cold from the minibar. Pig’s blood, reeking of the barnyard.

“You going vegan on me, you prissy little shit?” he mutters. “You put that on the rider yet? For Mr Billy Tallent: one pack of Player’s, one fifth of Jack Daniel’s, one groupie (blonde, big tits), and a pint of fresh butcher’s blood.”

Billy mumbles something in his sleep, something that doesn’t quite form words. Then, in one clear syllable: “Joe?”

Joe whirls round. “Billy? Can you...”

Billy coughs and rolls over without opening his eyes. He buries his face in the pillow and goes straight back to sleep.

 

* * *

 

Billy’s hunched over his acoustic guitar, cigarette balanced at the corner of his lips, scrawled sheets of paper strewn across the couch. He’s been in studio sessions all week, working on Jenifur’s new album. He’s doing better these days, Joe thinks. He even smells cleaner. No more groupies, no more hookers, just enough Jim Beam and butcher’s blood to keep him level and fend off the shakes.

It’s something of Jenifur’s that he’s playing now, one of their new tracks. Rage dipped in anodyne, shrink-wrapped and sanitised for a squeamish generation, but it’s enough to keep him absorbed. He’s always been at his happiest when he’s lost in the music, one of God’s innocents, dead to the world. Joe watches his fingers hunt across the frets, their shadows fast as wolf spiders on the apartment walls. He and Billy have spent half their lives like this, forging the music, forging Hard Core Logo, their minds and limbs tangling up together until the notes and lyrics alike get lost in frantic coupling.

None of that now. No crumpling or staining of these papers, and none of that manic energy either. Just solid labour, safe and profitable. The chord progression in this particular track isn’t working, though. Billy knows it isn’t; he keeps playing the bridge and looking up, frowning. He doesn’t know how to fix it alone.

“Joe?” he says quietly, and waits as if he might get an answer.

Joe almost trips as he leaps to his feet. “Billy? Hey, can you...?” He races to the couch, tries to shove the guitar aside to get at him. “I’m—hey, I’m here! Billy?”

Billy twitches but his gaze doesn’t meet Joe’s, not even when Joe waves frantic hands in front of his face. Then he breathes hard, dips his head, and goes back to his chords.

 

* * *

 

Jenifur is opening for Green Day, and Billy’s running late. He’s dressed in his stage gear, but he’s still glued to the mirror, tweaking nervously at his hair. Classic Billy delaying tactics.

Joe wants to shake him.

Until their last gig, he’d never raised a hand to him. Not like he meant it, anyway. Play-fights, a few cuffs round the ear when Billy had them coming, sure, but nothing Billy couldn’t have gotten out from if he’d wanted. The very first time he turned up in Joe’s dad’s garage, a shy, sullen thirteen-year-old with the blood sickness already in him, he had all the bruises he’d ever need, inside and out. No point adding to them. It wasn’t going to make him do anything he didn’t want.

The puppy fat’s long gone; he’s almost six foot of raw energy and sinew now, and he still looks beaten. Joe tugs at his shoulder and snaps fingers at him, unseen in the mirror.

“You sold your soul for this at the fucking crossroads, Billy Hollywood,” he says. “Hell, you sold _my_ soul for this. Don’t back out now, you little prick.”

Billy turns up the collar of his long woollen coat, rock-star cool in the whirring AC. Like Joe, he’s never quite in sync with southern reality.

“I know you’re there,” he says suddenly, into the silence. “Joe? I know you’re watching.” He half-turns, though he keeps his eyes on the mirror as if he’s scared to look round—maybe in case Joe’s there, maybe in case he’s not.

Joe laughs in pure shock. “Of course I’m watching! I’m always fucking watching! Can you—hey, can you...”

Billy cocks his head, waiting. “Look, I gotta—” he says, and starts towards the door. Then he turns back and stares at the empty air a few inches wide of Joe’s eye-line. “Just don’t...don’t go anywhere, okay?”

Joe spreads his arms wide. “The fuck else would I go?”

Billy’s still waiting, his head tilted, listening for echoes. He’s only a guitarist, after all; he always did need Joe to give him the words. It’s taken Joe this long to realise they didn’t have to be lyrics.

“I’ll _be_ here,” he says. He goes up to him and kisses him on the cheek, gentle as a lover. “Okay? I’ll be here. Go be a rock star, Billy boy.”

Billy flinches as if someone just walked over his grave. Then he closes his eyes and leans very slightly into an embrace he can’t feel. For a second or two his smile flickers to life, the angelic one with a world of sweetness trapped within it.

“Welcome to Hard Core Logo,” he says. “You don’t get to leave.”

Picking up his Strat, he puts on his shades and heads out to the waiting limo.

 

 


End file.
